Where the mountains can be gods it seems obvious to talk about the sacredness of landscape: The proceedings of an international seminar at Heidelberg in May 1998 present nine case studies covering the entire range of the Himalaya, from Ladakh and Garhwal in India, to Humla and Mustang in Nepal as well as Bhutan. The focus is on space-related architectural and/or anthropological analysis of the built environment and its location in landscape – a term that denotes the uniqueness and singularity of a certain place. The presented cases document how on various scales territories are identified with protective deities, a quality that needs ritual renewal through processions and physical acts like colouring. Actions and perceptions allow the reader to understand landscape as a process rather than an essence of space.

Ernst STEINKELLNERis Professor of Buddhist Studies and Tibetology at Vienna University and Director of the Institute for Asian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Niels Gutschowis an architectural historian based in Abtsteinach (Germany) and Bhaktapur (Nepal)

Axel Michaelsis Professor of Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg

Charles Rambleis a Tibetologist and senior lecturer at the Oriental Institute of Oxford University

Where the mountains can be gods it seems obvious to talk about the sacredness of landscape: The proceedings of an international seminar at Heidelberg in May 1998 present nine case studies covering the entire range of the Himalaya, from Ladakh and Garhwal in India, to Humla and Mustang in Nepal as well as Bhutan. The focus is on space-related architectural and/or anthropological analysis of the built environment and its location in landscape – a term that denotes the uniqueness and singularity of a certain place. The presented cases document how on various scales territories are identified with protective deities, a quality that needs ritual renewal through processions and physical acts like colouring. Actions and perceptions allow the reader to understand landscape as a process rather than an essence of space.

Ernst STEINKELLNERis Professor of Buddhist Studies and Tibetology at Vienna University and Director of the Institute for Asian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences